Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
THE HUNTED FOX
M ontague retaliates against one of our safe houses a week later. A real one, not a decoy we dangle as bait to ferret out leaks or suss out Baroun’s current strategy, but that isn’t the reason I’m breaking out into a brisk jog on the way home.
Stubborn as usual, I refused to take the coach to make a point to myself. If I’d taken the coach I would’ve had to bow down to my trepidation, my fear. Cower from the sense of being stalked through the streets of my own District from something no one can see or feel but me.
This is the most alone I’ve felt since Danon surrendered his freedom to save me. I slap the back of my hand against my prickling eyes.
The Mad Dog of Faronne is now a hunted Fox, and there’s no one I can tell because I don’t quite believe it myself.
Because no matter how many times I look over my shoulder, search the shadows or the rooftops, I see nothing .
No one is following me.
But today, like every day this week, as soon as I leave my house the phantom threat of sharp nails drags across my throat, followed by the press of invisible fingers.
I stumble and nearly trip when teeth graze my neck, the bubbling caress of air a chuckle against my skin—not a happy chuckle.
Numair and Juliette will be angry I slipped away without them again, but watching me run from air would be too much even for them. We don’t have mental institutions in Everenne, but if we ever built one, it would probably be because of me.
Adrenaline rushes through my blood and I jerk to a halt and whirl around. Well, we always knew I was crazy. I suppose no one can blame me for finally having truly snapped.
“Come out,” I snarl. “Whoever you are. Whatever you want. Come the fuck out.”
No part of me wants to believe I’m imagining things. Hallucinating. That my guilt has created a ghost to torment me because waiting on the Prince to come take my head is just that agonizing.
I’m about to chop said head off myself and deliver it under my arm to the palace just to get all of this horseshit over with.
But that’s such a defeatist attitude.
Of course no one responds aside from a few quick glances from those close enough to hear my demand. They give me a wide berth, but they often do if they recognize me.
Turning, I begin jogging again, still refusing to hail a coach though the streets feel like a maze, a predator’s cave even as I tilt my head back and look up into the stormy sky as reassurance the world has not become a trap .
I lift my middle finger and wave it over my shoulder.
Fifteen minutes later when I enter the Commander’s office, the sheaf of documents clutched in my hand, it takes a moment for my heart rate to settle.
Tereille is sitting on his mate’s desk and Dulenne is present, one of the cousins? 1 édouard uses for intel. The Commander worked our operatives until they uncovered a meeting between Montague and potential allies among the neutral Districts, in the forested territory outside Everenne.
Dulenne’s average tall, with red-gold hair worn in multiple braids down his back, his nose hawkish and his eyes a light gray-blue like steel. “The location is unusual.” He bows to me but doesn’t interrupt his report. “Three neutral Branches represented, meeting two hours northeast of the city.”
édouard’s fingers still on his pen. “Away from our usual surveillance points.”
“Exactly. They know our methods—the safehouses we monitor, the usual meeting locations. It suggests they’re planning something significant enough to warrant abandoning established protocols.”
“Numbers?”
“At least thirty warriors, possibly more. The tree canopy could hide more.”
édouard sets down his pen. “And Montague’s purpose?”
“The positioning suggests this isn’t a political meeting, Commander. It’s an-off-the books war council.”
My lips twist in a sardonic smile. “Well, now that just makes me feel excluded.”
Dulenne’s voice carries the flat tone of a soldier delivering unwelcome intelligence. “We’ve wondered why none of their retaliations have been definitive—we’re outmatched if they raise all their forces, plus new allies.”
“The Prince is awake, though it’s unclear if he’s coherent yet,” I say reluctantly. “If they’re trying to ally with the neutral Branches, this might be an ask-forgiveness situation. They wouldn’t hide if he’d sanctioned it.”
“He could be planning to end it himself,” édouard says.
“He never has before. He and Maman stayed out of it mostly and once he slept again, hostilities resumed. I know that much.”
There’s a grim silence.
The Prince is conscious. Why hasn’t he called Court? Why hasn’t he come for my head? The waiting is driving me to drink. More drink, and into the office of my therapist.
“I’m pleased to see you today, Aerinne,” Dr. Ward says. “It shows self-awareness that you scheduled this appointment
when you recognized you needed support. What’s been on your mind that brought you in?”
Unlike today, I rarely come to her office. We have a standing weekly—sometimes bi-weekly—at-home appointment. She slips
into a warded space on Faronne House grounds, and I meet her there under the cover of night. I don’t do well talking about my
feelings in daylight, or on another’s territory.
I’m uneasy. “This doesn’t add up.”
“Timing?” édouard says.
Dulenne glances at me. “Tonight. They’re moving fast, likely trying to act before we can counter-mobilize. Orders, Commander?”
“We move tonight. Three units, as planned, but prepared for resistance.”
“The forest terrain favors ambush,” I cut him off. “If they’re expecting us, we could be walking onto a killing ground.” I stop. This is an argument I don’t want to have in front of the rank and file. “Dulenne, dismissed.”
He bows, and leaves the office.
Tereille slides off édouard’s desk. He wears his wheat-and-honey streaked hair clipped short on the sides, longer in the front, his antique bottle-green eyes twinkling at me through a lock falling in his face.
I glance at my therapist, then shove up off the couch and walk to the window, crossing my arms over my chest as I look out at Everenne
University’s forest-dotted campus, the black and white academic complex peering between trees.
“Jules and Numair are worried,” I say. “The disassociation. ”
I drop the Low Court documents on édouard’s desk. It hadn’t gone well today. He pretends to ignore me.
“Lord étienne successfully negotiated the preliminary reparations agreement,” I say. “Labornne’s official protest over our breach of their District will soon be resolved. Whiners.”
Tereille picks up the report and skims, whistling low. “Expensive. Maybe we should have let it go to the Prince’s Court. I hear the Executioner is in town, and payment by beheading is cheaper.”
I pin édouard with a look. “You’re certain Dulenne’s intel is good? Labornne didn’t leak false intel to set us up in retaliation? Since when does Montague so poorly secure their tête-à-têtes?”
“Darkan?” she asks. She waits for me to continue. She always waits.
“Yes. The problem is that I don’t see it as a problem.”
The Commander finally sets down the notebook he’s scribbling nothing sentences in while hoping I’ll go away. “If you don’t think I can do my job, demote me, Lady. I can use a vacation.”
Such a damn attitude. “If I demote you, I’ll give Tereille your office.”
Tereille tugs at one of my dark curls. “I think not.” His lips curve. “I’d have no time for my swains.”
“Realms, that would be such a shame.” I rub a hand over my face. “Fine. At least if we damage a tree or step on grass, we’ll be spared the cries of reparations.”
“What has the world come to?” Tereille echoes mournfully.
I consider the Commander, choosing my words with care to better avoid the thorns underneath the attempted silent treatment. “Remind me the purpose of today. If we’re gathering intelligence, fine. But we don’t go in hot without a goal.”
His eyes harden into obsidian chips. “That falls under the category of telling me how to do my job.”
“There are worse coping mechanisms. Do you feel like you
can trust your instincts on this?”
“I can trust Darkan.”
Her gaze, muted behind tinted glasses, is keen, but she doesn’t
challenge my curt defensiveness.
“Don’t be an ass, Ard,” Tereille says, perching on the edge of the desk again.
He tilts his head and reaches out to tug on édouard’s pointed ear tip.
A sharp tug, followed up with a sensual caress of his fingertips.
Darling Ard ignores him. “I’d like to know too. I’m too lovely to die by ambush today.”
édouard scowls at his mate. “Nothing is ever certain,” is the growled reply.
“It could be an ambush, or it could be luck. Can we afford to ignore it? If they’re building an alliance to strike before the Prince resumes command, we won’t need to worry about our weakened supply chains. Faronne will be rubble. ”
It’s not that I fault his reasoning—but something feels off—more off than the constant tension of fighting off the sense of being watched, hunted.
Of course I have an active imagination and a well-developed guilt complex, both well deserved. They fill my mind with plenty of scenarios of why the Prince has delayed taking any action.
I suppress a shiver. I could tell my family it feels like he’s coming for me, but. . .I feel that in a different way than they would interpret it. His silence feels personal. Not “you killed my son” personal.
More like “you killed my son and now you’ll pay the debt in blood and living flesh beneath my teeth.”
I need to talk to Ward about my dosages, maybe add something for paranoia and whatever it’s called when you assign personality and motivation to air. What has air ever done to me?
Seems like it wants to do plenty.
Is it paranoia, Darkan murmurs in my mind. Or is it prescience, little harpy. What have I told you about your instincts?
Trust them.
You do listen to me when it counts.
His presence fades.
“And if this is just another offensive,” I continue, “except Baroun is bored so decided to get creative? Or if it’s not about us at all. We’ll have escalated tensions again and what have we gained?”
“Tensions. Our Lord dead, your brother taken, Embriel missing. We’re well beyond tensions. ”
There’s nothing I can say to refute .
He stands, broad shoulders stiff. “Have you given up on avenging your mother? Ready to consign Lord Danon to rot in his cell?”
“Has Darkan encouraged you to commit harm to self or others?”
“No. He’s a stick that never met a mud pile he didn’t like.” Momentary
amusement fades. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I’m the train
with no brakes on a track that’s about to go over a cliff, my family in
the train car whooping and hollering like crashing to our deaths below
is going to be a grand time. And the Prince is waiting at the bottom of the pit.”
“He frightens you.”
I turn to stare at her. “That’s a given.”
“What do you fear?”
“Vengeance.”
“What do you really fear?”
I look away. “Justice.”
I still, slamming the brakes down on my instinctive reaction to leap across the desk and throttle him. I pick up the report and begin shredding it into pieces. Baba has a copy. “My mother wanted?—”
“Don’t tell me what Maryonne wanted, girl. She was my Lord.” édouard turns away, striding to the lone window in the office. He looks out, probably struggling to restrain his violent urges the same as I. We are kin.
Tereille watches him, resignation and patience in his half smile. Then he glances at me and shrugs, leaving the desk to approach édouard and slide an arm around his shoulders.
“We don’t stop, we don’t question. Not until her death means something,” the Commander says finally, not relaxing in his mate’s embrace, but not pushing him away either. “Not until they pay.”
“You’re feeling out of control of your environment and the situation.”
“Out of control? I was never in control. It’s always been someone else.
I can’t think of one time when I was allowed to make a decision about
my life, independent of outside input, outside of. . .control.”
He speaks as if he has a greater claim to vengeance than I, her damn daughter.
“If the Prince comes, what then?” I stride to the door and jerk it open, pausing to look back. “That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.”
I slam it closed behind me and march down the hall and up a flight of stairs.
1 ? Ninephene, the root of the bastard Everennesse dialect, works on inflections.
So you know how in English you can have two words that look alike but mean different things?
In Ninephene you can have two words that look alike, but they are inflected differently, and that changes the meaning.
They use the word “cousin” a lot in the story but there are two different meanings.
One the literal definition which is a blood relation and they'll apply that to anybody who has a proven blood claim traceable within a reasonable number of generations, or they also use it like we do when we say “hey cuz!” to someone you consider family.
So, no, not everyone Aerinne calls cousin is a blood relation.